Visceral
by InformalSpoofer
Summary: She is seven. He is not dead yet. Toph has been having nightmares. OC.


**AN: **An OC plays a large role in this. Just so y'know.

Visceral

She is seventeen years old, which is too old to remain single and avoid a scandal in high society.

She doesn't care.

(Lately, she has been having nightmares.)

-

At the bottom of the ocean, silk strokes her cheek and her heart thuds in her ears. She can't hear her breath, and the silk turns to pressure, and the pressure turns to the cold steel of a knife, and she can't control it, can't bend it away. Her arms hang like sand and she is younger than twelve (and she can see the top shelf when she touches it and gasps and tumbles down).

Their bodies face her and it's a hundred instead of three and her feet move, but it is into emptiness and water trails off her cheeks.

(When she wakes, it burns like it was yesterday, but it wasn't, it's been years, now, and the water on her cheeks is cold.)

-

She is seven years old and he is her life.

He is not dead yet.

When he coughs, her parents stiffen against the floor (but that's not how he dies, is it, though they think it will be).

-

If her father had not yelled at him for breaking the vase, he would not have died. They all knew it was her, she who can only see so far and who has trouble reigning in her lashes of emotions as a physical thing. Her father knew it was her but he yelled at him and that night, they sneak out her window.

She is seven. He is not dead yet.

-

She is seventeen and has torn cities asunder.

But she has nightmares and she is isolated in a way that has never seemed possible before now, because even the earth is her loyal comrade. For all the miles she can study, she shakes and bites her knuckles and has to remind herself that she is awake.

(She stops sleeping on the bed. It's easier that way to pretend she doesn't wake wanting to tear herself apart.)

-

He's named after her mother's father. It's tradition for her mother's line and since her father stole so much of her, he allows her a living reminder of the deceased.

That's probably why no one believes her, when she is seven years old and screaming because her body has no better response. They don't _want_ to believe her, don't want to believe that a nobleman's namesake could die that way, so they don't. It's very simple.

They stop mentioning him (and it is two men who with the finality of silence disappear).

She wonders if he never existed at all.

-

Gaoling is safe.

That is what they are told.

-

She finds it - no, she finds _them_ - first.

"…think it's strange that they're always so wrapped up in that kinda stuff," he's saying. He pretends that he doesn't immediately notice her stop, but he does. He pauses inside the edge of her periphery and waits, tapping his foot out of habit. She always stops when she feels something new and strange.

When she has spent a full three minutes flexing her toes against the ground for lack of clarity, he says her name.

They investigate.

The sound of cicadas fades as the gardens disappear.

-

She remembers exactly the way the man's breath smells, with his knife against her cheek and her terror running down her legs. She is seven and he is very, very tall and the hand that touches her neck is slick.

She is fourteen the first time she tries hard liquor. She is fourteen when she drinks it for the last time (when she bends over out by a pile of fresh hay and vomits until she cries).

-

"You know we don't have you both followed by guards on the strict condition that you _watch_ her," her father says. To her ears he might as well be roaring (and that is the effect he intends). "She could have been hurt. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"I'm sorry, Father," he murmurs. He does not say _it was just a vase_, but it is what they're both thinking.

In her room, he coughs into his hand for a long time. When he's done, his breath runs shaky and she has an idea. "Let's run away," she says, and it sounds like the most brilliant plan in the world.

-

He is not a fire bender. He's not even Fire Nation, but that is what her mother tells her.

She believes it until she first touches someone from the Fire Nation and their skin is warm and alive. She believes it until she meets the Dragon of the West.

-

Her hair sticks to her face and she doesn't know she has killed a man. She's cold all over and no one is beating, no one is speaking, and things don't work inside of _her_, either. An animal's skin is neatly laid out nearby, and she can't smell anything but warm death and meat, but she also can't vomit it out.

She is thirteen when she remembers.

She is fifteen when she fully understands.

(She is sixteen when she thinks about telling them, but peace is gentle and they would not believe her, anyway.)


End file.
